George F Winter

Caesarean sections and ethics

Miscarriage

Semantics

Gender disappointment

Social egg freezing

Gestational diabetes

Compassion and kindness

Significant among the dispiriting catalogue of midwifery and obstetric issues that were identified in the review of 250 maternity services cases at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust, is...

COVID-19 and caesareans

In their recent systematic review of SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy, Akhtar et al (2020) considered 22 studies, which identified 156 pregnant women with SARS-CoV-2 and 108 neonatal outcomes. The most common...

How far does duty of care extend?

The impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on global health continues apace, generating widespread apprehension among the public and healthcare workers

Viability of newborns

Should we have on-call philosophers in midwifery? Philippa Foot (1920–2010) suggested that just as we summon a plumber to fix a leaking tap, a ‘jobbing philosopher’ could be called when ethical issues...

COVID-19: what are the physical and mental challenges?

The global emergence of COVID-19 a matter of months ago means that while its relatively thin evidence base expands, the need to interpret new findings with caution implies that the science of this...

Gestational diabetes and ethics

According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) around 700 000 women give birth in England and Wales annually; up to 5% of these women have either pre-existing diabetes or...

Pulse oximetry screening

Critical congenital heart defects (CCHDs) affect around 2 in 1 000 newborns, and babies with CCHD often have low blood oxygen concentrations, which can be measured by non-invasive pulse oximetry (PO)...

Non-invasive prenatal testing and decision-making

The phrase ‘tyranny of choice’ has been widely used in recent years to illustrate the increasing range of options that are available to consumers in the developed world But Suter (2018) uses the term...

Dealing with burnout

In their study of physician stress, Hannan et al (2018) note that in 1974, the American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger first coined the term ‘burnout’, defining it as ‘a state of mental and...